PILC is excited to welcome Lauren Burke, NYU Law ’09 alumna and Founder of Atlas: DIY, Developing Immigrant Youth, as our Practitioner-In-Residence starting January 2014. Lauren will be joining PILC on Fridays, meeting one-on-one with students interested in pursuing public interest careers and hosting a weekly happy hour (look out for the announcements in the RocketDocket). We especially encourage 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls interested in direct legal services to call PILC’s office (212-998-6686) for a counseling appointment with Lauren. In addition, Lauren is available to help 2Ls craft project-based fellowship ideas and explore and reach out to sponsoring organizations.
Lauren Burke ’09
Since graduating from NYU School of Law in 2009, Lauren has dedicated her career to empowering immigrants and children, focusing on survivors of trauma. Fluent in Mandarin, she received a Skadden Fellowship to work with Chinese teenage victims of labor trafficking, brought to the United States under severe debt bondage. In 2011, was asked to develop and oversee the New York Asian Women’s Center in-house immigration law practice for survivors of human trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence and in 2012 she became an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School to teach the immigrant youth clinic. At the same time, Lauren partnered with three of her former clients to found Atlas: DIY, Developing Immigrant Youth – an incubator of community, education, and empowerment for undocumented immigrants and their allies and, in July of 2013, they opened their doors full time. Lauren is a 2013 Forbes 30 under 30 recipient and 20 Millennials on a Mission, a Huffington Post “new abolitionist,” New Leaders Council 40 Under 40, and NYU’s Distinguished Young Alumna of the Year. Lauren’s work has been featured in the New York Times and on NPR’s All Things Considered, she has written publications for law journals and foreign governments, and her work was the inspiration behind the documentary “Walking Merchandise.” Lauren is particularly thrilled to return “home” to NYU to counsel students on their public interest careers and ensure they find the job of their dreams using the law to change lives. Lauren enjoys career counseling and is the author of the PSJD blog “The Ten Biggest Mistakes You Can Make While Interviewing at Public Interest Law Career Fairs.”